Conference Agenda

Students are frequently rendered into digitized and datafied formats. When students use and engage with digital technologies like digital learning materials and digital tests, a plethora of information in the form of digital data is generated about them. Such data are often described as static and rational matters of fact, neutral and objective in comparison to ‘subjective’ human judgment (Williamson & Piattoeva, 2019). While this description is not entirely wrong, it somehow limits our possibilities to see data as dynamic becomings, materializing in a variety of ways, as well as to analyze how data participate in the configuration of for example humans in other ways than merely describing their properties in quantitative terms. It seems that we somehow lack the vocabulary to describe data as more-than-digital phenomena.

In this article, we aim to take a few steps towards producing such a vocabulary. We explore the vibrant and vital qualities generated when for example schoolteachers engage student data, such as those displayed in colorful data visualizations. We illustrate five different data becomings in a single ethnographic case.

In order to explore possible vocabularies, this article takes up more-than-human theoretical perspectives found in feminist new materialist scholarship as well as in non-Western cosmologies. Specifically, we build on Donna Haraway’s more-than-human theorization of becoming as becoming with (Haraway, 2008), which challenges ideas of the human as being separated from its surroundings, as well as Deborah Lupton’s more-than-human theoretical work on human-data assemblages and her attention to vitalities (Lupton, 2020; Lupton et al., 2022). We illustrate our conceptual points with an ethnographic case study exploring what happens to students and teachers when engaging with digital testing in Danish primary and lower secondary education. Teaching, for the oldest students in Danish primary and lower secondary schools (‘folkeskole’), is almost exclusively done through digital platforms and digital learning materials. These digital learning materials automate part of the assessments and testing of student work by visualizing the results through graphs, bar charts, and other forms of data visualizations.

We understand data visualizations as one of several becomings of data. While both educational scholars and data practitioners like teachers often refer to ‘data’ as one-and-the-same phenomenon, we propose viewing data as multiple interwoven becomings. In other words, we do not understand visualization as a process of reconfiguring ‘actual’ or ‘raw’ data into a visual format, but rather as one of the many ways data materialize. Data only ever emerge in some sort of specific material form, as for example digital data made up of binary digits, as ‘raw’ data made up of survey responses or registered values in rows and columns, or as visuals made up of colors, shapes, and numerical values. Even though the category of ‘data visualizations’ indicates a particular state of being of data, most data materializations are visual in some way – also ‘raw’ data. Thus, we do not use the term data visualizations to refer only to system-generated data visualizations with their colorful dashboard aesthetics, but also to homemade tables or notes displaying data in a different and more mundane, yet visual format. Our article includes empirical examples of several types of data visualizations used and produced by teachers. It also includes empirical examples of ‘data’ simply materializing as an idea or concept in talk, without emerging in any visual form. As the analysis will show, these various becomings of data are important and constitute students and teachers in different ways – as they are becoming with data. We therefore view sensitivities to different materializations of data in different situations as analytically fruitful for our understanding of data practices.

Due to neoliberal governance, accountability, evaluation, and clearly specified goals have become the buzzwords of the administration of education. Increasingly, the answer to enhancing efficiency and accountability in education, is offered through technocratic rationality, as in digitalization and new educational technologies offering effective means for management of time, space and pedagogical content. (e.g., Ball 2015; Plum 2012). In such ethos, commercialization of education has accelerated rapidly, leaving education to face novel pressures, expectations as well as transformations on a global scale. These transformations are notably characterized by an apparent constriction of the overarching objectives of education, a narrowing of the scope of accessible information, and reconfiguring the very concept of human subjectivity. (Mertanen, Vainio & Brunila 2022).

The first aim in our paper is to clarify the impact of commercialization on teacher education within the broader academic context. As Ball (2006) has argued, it is necessary to examine the impact of the increasing number of private commercial actors on education. Acknowledging that private education is undoubtedly part of organizing education in contemporary societies is imminent, thus ‘the question is no longer whether private actors should be allowed in education, but rather, to what extent and how should their activities be regulated, and to what end’ (Rizvi 2016: 2). Educational entrepreneurship has grown rapidly also in Finland, where education has traditionally been a public good and free of charge. What follows is that ideologies of ‘business rationale and attitude, emphasizing innovation, dissemination of ‘best-practices’, quick evidence for decision-making, and return on investments’ are now incorporated into education (Candido Hinke Dobrochinski, Seppänen & Thrupp 2023). Thus, we find most relevant Ball’s (2006) call for the investigation of the ethical and moral consequences of commercialization, since it affects also what in education in general is seen meaningful and why.

In more practical terms we aim to examine the possibilities that could offer strategies for challenging these forces by asking; How do teacher education students recognize commercialization of education? and What means support their understanding of the phenomenon of commercialization, and the effects of it? These questions are interconnected within the larger framework of education governance and the effects it has on teachers. As teachers are increasingly internalizing the idea of a neo-liberal professional, as in believing that by acquiring new (e.g., technological) skills, they will improve their productivity and ‘add value’ to themselves (see Ball, 2003; Pesonen & Valkonen, 2023), they are at the same time more ontologically insecure – that is, they are unsure whether they are ‘doing enough, doing the right thing, doing as much as others, or as well as others, constantly looking to improve, to be better, to be excellent’ (Ball, 2003: 220). By examining future teachers’ understanding of commercialism in education we also aim to increase knowledge about the effects of highly individualized perception of teacher’s professionalism.

Objectives and purposes

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing demand for evidence-based policies and practices in education worldwide. This has led to a hierarchy of knowledge sources, with data from standardized testing and evaluations being prioritized as ‘objective’ measures, while local and contextual knowledge ranks lower (Johansson et al., 2015). School actors are expected not only to comply with policy demands but also to develop their practices according to research relevant to their profession (Penuel et al., 2017). A key challenge is that it is often assumed that access to various knowledge sources leads to its actual use. Several studies show that this is not the case as teachers rarely use research to develop their practice as research is perceived as too abstract (Joram et al., 2020). Also, expectations for rapid improvements to raise test scores put pressure on school actors’ decision-making and seem to promote knowledge sources targeted short-term solutions rather than long-term developmental work (Mausethagen et al., 2018). Sources of knowledge that are practical and closely related to teaching or school practice are more likely to be used (van Ackeren et al., 2013). Moreover, professional learning communities and networks have an important influence on teachers’ learning and school development (individual and organizational learning) (Stoll & Louis, 2007).

This paper focuses on the extent to which and how teachers' use various knowledge sources in development work, such as data from standardized testing, practical experiences, subject knowledge, pedagogy, didactics, and educational research. The analysis explores and compares teachers’ use of knowledge sources in two different development project settings. Both projects are prioritized development areas in the school program. One of the projects can be described as a typical ‘top-down’ project because it involves new policies on formative assessments and thus new expectations from school authorities to which the school must respond. The other project represents a ‘bottom-up’ project, which was initiated in the school by the principal and is now being driven forward voluntarily by teachers. The organizational context and the actors in both projects are largely the same.

The following research questions guide the analysis:

• RQ1: What kind of knowledge sources do teacher teams draw upon in development work?
• RQ2: What differences can be identified regarding knowledge sources in two different project settings (top-down vs. bottom-up project)?

Theoretical Framework

Policy enactment is used as a key analytical perspective since it helps identifying priorities and conditions for local school actors involved in school development in specific socio-institutional settings. Moreover, it emphasises how teachers in the study through creative processes interpret, translate and recontextualise relatively abstract ideas into practice (Braun et al., 2011).